Slavery has a long tradition in Portugal.
Muslims were taken prisoner and enslaved by Christians in the
wars in Portugal during the 12th and 13th centuries. Although
slavery in Muslim people declined in subsequent centuries a
trade in African slaves was established in the 15th century
following early expeditions to the continent. Portugal was the
first European country to attempt to conquor and exploit Africa,
establishing many forts along the coast and treaties with heads
of state to help enable this trade in human beings. Initially
the trade developed with Portugal as the hub of business, with
goods and slaves traded through its capital Lisbon, with most
slaves working in cities such as Lisbon, Évora and areas
such as the Algarve. By the mid 16th century there were over
32,000 African slaves in Portugal, with the majority owned by
the aristocracy, officials and religious institutions. However
the number of slaves declined after demand for them in the Portuguese
colony of Brazil led to an increase in prices, and gradually
Brazil's economic importance, fundamentally linked to slavery,
overtook that of Portugal.

Prince Henry the Navigator

Prince Henry the Navigator, the third
son of the King of Portugal, was pivotal to early Portuguese exploration,
navigation and science, inspiring an "Age of Discovery".
He helped finance and organise many expeditions across the Atlantic,
such as the one in 1415 to the North and West coasts of Africa, from
which he learnt about trade in spices, gold and silver. The first
slaves were brought to Portugal in 1441 for Prince Henry. Initially
slaves were captured through outrageous means, including kidnapping
and banditry. However Prince Henry ordered a change of practice, and
so trading for slaves between Africans and Europeans became the norm.

Prince Henry established
a slave market & fort in Arguin Bay in 1445 and they were brought
back to Portugal. When a large slave auction was held in Lagos in
that same year it was described by one witness as a "terrible
scene of misery and disorder". By 1455 800 Africans were transported
to Portugal annually.

By the 1470s Lisbon, Portugal's capital city, became the country's
main slave port. The Portuguese slave trade started then not as
a trans-Atlantic trade but as an old world trade, supplying slaves
to Lisbon and hence onwards to Spain and Italy. In 1539 12,000 slaves
were sold in the city's markets. This differed from other European
countries' experience of the trade which developed much more in
their colonies.

Lisbon also thrived off the businesses associated with slavery,
with Portuguese goods exchanged for slaves, goods traded for slaves
and goods produced by the slaves. People invested in the trade,
and profited, and the Royal family took its share through taxation.
African slaves were employed in a variety of occupations but increasingly
they were to be found in urban employment such as domestic service.

tThe Portugeuse explored
and claimed more of the West African coast and islands, with trade
being established with Ghana, Benin, Gabon, and Mali in quick succession
in the 1470s. The Portuguese establish treaties with some nations,
often trading weapons for slaves. This had repurcussions, leading
to warfare, starvation and ultimately depopulation in some regions.

In 1443 they were able to trade one horse for 25-30 slaves, by
1500 price of slaves rose to match the increased demand, one horse
traded for 6 to 8 slaves.

Bases were established on small islands off the West Coast of Africa,
the most important being Cape Verde and Sao Thome. These were used
for collecting slaves traded from the mainland, who were then sent
to Lisbon. The development of sugar cultivation on Sao Thome provided
the blueprint for the larger plantation economy of the Americas.
The free black and white populations mixed and rapidly and became
creolised, which was common to Portuguese colonies.

The Kongo was devastated by its relationship with Portugal. First
contact was in 1482 and initially the Kongolese were hopeful that
it might be a beneficial relationship based on equality, and there
was even an exchange of Ambassadors and the Royal family were baptised
into the Catholic Church.

However over the next few decades the interest shifted towards
the slave trade. The King at this time, Alfonso I, despite his efforts
to ban the trade, lost half of his kingdom to slavery. In 1611 even
the Portuguese King was so concerned at the impact slavery was having
he tried to ban whites from the interior, but this was later rescinded.

By the late 15th century Portugal had extended its reach along the
East coast of Africa trying to establish a dominance in trade. Their
presence was strengthened when during the 1540s some East African
Kingdoms ask for help from Portugal in fighting off Ottoman Turkish
efforts to expand their empire. Portugal began slave trading in
Ethiopia, Mozambique, Magagascar.

However during the 1570s African forces attacked Portuguese colonies
in Mozambique and Ghana, a war errupted in Angola, and in 1585 there
was a Swahili revolt on E African coast. By the 17th century African
revolt and competition from other European powers reduced Portugal's
trading to a few coastal outposts.

Pedro Alvares Cabral a
Portuguese explorer was the first European to see Brazil in April
1500. He claimed it for Portugal, naming it the "Island of the
True Cross" which later became Brazil named after a plant.

The Brazil he landed in was populated with between 2 and 6 million
indigenous peoples, living as farmers or hunter-gatherers.

Major Portugeuse involvement in Brazil began in the second half
of the 16th century with sugar as the main export. Plantation methods
had already been established in their African island colonies. Success
in Brazil increased the need for slaves, and so importation of slaves
took off after 1550. This was exacerbated by the discovery of gold
in the 1690s, the demand was sustained by the rise in coffee production
during the C19th. Throughout this period Brazil imported approx
3.5 million slaves.

As early as 1761 successive
attempts were made to prohibit slavery and emancipate slaves within
Portugal but they failed due to strong opposition. The buying of slaves
from Africa was formally outlawed in 1830 but continued until the
1850s, whilst slavery itself continued until 1888.